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1 Scaffolding Reading and Writing

Rose, Gray and Cowey

Scaffolding Reading and Writing forIndigenous Children in School

David Rose, Brian Gray and Wendy CoweyIn Wignell, P. (ed.) 1999. Double Power: English literacy in indigenous schooling.

Melbourne: Languages Australia

In this chapter we report on a literacy teaching approach that is enablingindigenous learners to successfully read and write texts that are appropriate fortheir school years, across the curriculum. The approach employs a sequence ofstrategies that provide scaffolding support for students to read complex textsfluently and accurately, and then to use the features of literate language that theyare learning to read in their own writing. These strategies have grown out of workwith indigenous students in Central Australia during the 1980s, and have sincebeen further developed in the Schools & Community Centre, University ofCanberra, with school students from all backgrounds experiencing severe literacydifficulties. They are currently being refined and successfully implemented in workwith indigenous students from Central Australian communities in primary andsecondary schools. The chapter begins by reviewing the needs of indigenousstudents for improvement in school participation and achievement rates and somecurrent responses to these issues. This is followed by a discussion of thescaffolding literacy strategies, in the context of some of the kinds of texts thatindigenous students may hear, read and write during their school career. The firstof these is a traditional Western Desert Dreaming story, transcribed and translatedto exemplify the kinds meanings and wordings that are familiar in the oral modesof both indigenous languages and English. This is then compared with examplesof English narratives and factual texts that students are now reading and writing inthe schools we are working with.

The need for improving literacy achievements

A series of reports have been published in Australia documenting alarmingly lowlevels of literacy in indigenous community schools. In 1996 for example, a majorNorthern Territory survey reported that "students in remote Aboriginal schools are,at best, three (3) years behind their urban counterparts and, at worst, seven (7)years behind" (NT Public Accounts Committee 1996: 13). These results for



indigenous students are consistent with the findings of the recent National LiteracyAssessments (ACER 1997), and with assessments of students' reading andwriting that we have conducted across remote community schools in SouthAustralia, and in the Wiltja high school annexe program for central Australianindigenous students in Adelaide (Schools & Community Centre 1998). Theresults of this survey are briefly summarised below. In the survey, writing sampleswere collected for each student in primary and secondary classes, and analysedagainst the criteria and example texts for the National Profile Levels (ACER 1997).Running record analyses of reading were collected for each student in primary andsecondary classes, and their results set against the reading criteria for the ProfileLevels. A student assessed as operating within Profile Level 2, for example, wouldbe able to read a text rated at this profile level with 90% accuracy. We found a clearpattern of widening gaps between indigenous students' literacy outcomes at eachyear level, and the average expectations for their years in the Profile Levels. Figure1 illustrates these widening gaps in primary school years. It compares classaverages for reading and writing at each year level in the community schools wesurveyed, with the national average Profile Level for each year level.

Figure 1: Reading and writing levels in remote SA community schools againstnational averages

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In Year 2, students' average performance would be classified as 'emergentliteracy'. This is already behind the general pattern in Australian schools, sincemost mainstream students are normally writing by Year 2. This lag in literacy



achievement was even more marked in Year 3, when still no students hadprogressed beyond Profile Level 1. By Year 4 only 10% were now at Profile Level 2,while the remainder were still emergent writers. There was a very slightimprovement by Year 5, with 25% at Profile Level 2, but still no students werewriting above junior primary level (Profile Levels 1 and 2). By Year 6, half thestudents were writing at Profile Level 2, and 20% at Profile Level 3. However it is amatter of serious concern that by this time, no students were reading and writingabove middle primary level (Profile Level 3), and 40% were still emergent writers.By Year 7, literacy levels actually fell, with none above Profile Level 2, reflecting theenrolment of the most successful students in the Wiltja high school annexeprogram in Adelaide. The progress of this group is illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Reading and writing levels in secondary annexe program againstnational averages

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Even this most successful group of indigenous students are severelydisadvantaged going into mainstream secondary schooling with middle primarylevel literacy skills. There is a slight improvement following a year long bridgingprogram, but only a fraction of that required to engage successfully with Year 8(high school in SA and NT begins in Year 8). There is then an improvement of oneProfile Level per year for Years 9 and 10, representing attrition of weaker studentsas well as improvement for those remaining. By Year 10, the average literacylevels of these students are equivalent to the average Profile Levels for Year 5primary school. For the 80-90% of young indigenous people remaining in their



communities, who do not have access to formal education beyond juniorsecondary years, opportunities in schooling, training and employment are verylimited. In the face of the figures from all these reports, there can be little doubt thatacademic literacy is one of the major contributing factors in the problems facingindigenous Australian communities. Such problems include the lowest highschool completion and further education rates for any group in Australia, thehighest unemployment levels, the lowest per capita income, the worst healthstatistics, and tragic levels of imprisonment and substance abuse amongst bothadults and young people.

Indigenous communities are very aware of the relationship between theseproblems and English literacy outcomes in their schools, and are increasinglydemanding higher standards of English literacy teaching. For example, ChrisJapangardi Poulson of Yuendumu NT, is quite clear about the root cause ofunemployment in his community, "At the moment not enough English is taught inschool and because of this there are many Aboriginal people who cannot get workof any kind" (1988). Yami Lester from the Pitjantjatjara communities, has highexpectations for the children learning English, "If they read and write and speakEnglish they can work in offices, they can go to college or university. They can learnto be accountants, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, builders. If we don't get agood education for them, we're always going to have white advisers in thecommunities" (1993). Martin Nakata of Torres Strait is critical of paternalistideologies that devalue English literacy teaching in indigenous education. "Isuspect, in fact I know, that the teaching of English is geared down, ...and thearguments for teaching traditional languages are in the ascendancy becauselinguists and anthropologists tell us we won't have an identity without it. ...I thinkthat the understanding of the historical call for English might help proponents ofbilingualism to really think about all the possibilities in trying to meet Islanders'need for English, or at the very least, to not override the urgency of effective Englishteaching" (this volume).

Together with these indigenous leaders, teachers and education departments aregenerally also very concerned about the serious problems with English literacyconfronting indigenous children in school. The range of responses to thisdiscouraging situation, quoted in major reports such as Provision of EducationServices to Remote Aboriginal Communities in the NT (Public AccountsCommittee 1996), Desert Schools Report (NLLIA 1996), and the National LiteracyAssessments (ACER 1997), fall into two broad categories. One type of responsehas been to assign responsibility to the students, and their families and



communities, to contribute to improving their literacy by changing their behavioursor language practices in the home. Factors that are frequently cited includeregularity of attendance, students' attitudes and behaviour in the classroom, aperceived lack of oral competence in English, and low levels of support for Englishliteracy in the home and community. Another type of response assignsresponsibility to teachers to change their modes of interaction with students in theclassroom. This category includes Malin's (1994) findings that commonbehavioural control strategies used by teachers should be modified to avoidalienating young indigenous children, and Malcolm's (1979, 1991) proposals thatteacher directed lesson topics and questioning sequences be dropped inindigenous classrooms in favour of topics and interactions controlled by thechildren.

While each of these responses may have some relevance to the problems ofindigenous students' participation in school, none seriously address the issue ofhow teachers can provide students with access to the academic-literatediscourses of schooling, at levels appropriate for their ages. These responses areunlikely to lead to effective outcomes, either because they focus on factors that arelargely out of teachers' and schools' control, or because these factors are less thecauses than the consequences of our failure to teach indigenous studentseffectively. While the second response type does address aspects of teaching, thefocus is on features of classroom interaction at the expense of learning goals.These responses are widespread in community schools and departments, as theyseem to provide plausible reasons for continuing low achievements of indigenousstudents. As a result their effect has been to divert efforts from the difficult problemof providing access to academic-literate discourses, and the schools' primaryresponsibility for doing so. Far from providing such access, teaching practices inmost of the classrooms we have observed are clustered primarily around activitiesthat are least taxing to students, and which consequently produce little educationalprogress, resulting in the outcomes shown in Figures 1 and 2. Similarobservations have often been made in other studies of indigenous communityclassrooms, such as M. Christie (1984), Harris (1985) and Folds (1987).

The reasons for such low levels of academic activity can be viewed from twoperspectives. On one hand, teachers report that if they push students incommunity classrooms into academic tasks that are too unfamiliar,communication between teacher and students becomes difficult, as Malin andMalcolm report, and classroom behaviour tends to deteriorate. Consequentlybehaviour management comes to be the implicit determining factor in classroom



practices, rather than academic goals, which come to be pitched at a level that willensure a manageable class. Over time within the school culture, this pattern leadsto the second factor - the low expectations that teachers have, in comparison towhat they would expect of a mainstream class, for the academic progress ofindigenous students, and the low expectations that these students tend to have ofthemselves. The outcome, as Harris (1985) and Folds (1987) point out, is that formuch of the time indigenous children are typically engaged in what is commonlyreferred to as unproductive 'busywork'.

The most effective and pervasive teacher coping strategy is busywork basedon worksheet activities. Busywork activities in the settlement schools usecopying, colouring and drawing which are capable of holding the attention ofthe Pitjantjatjara children, and this makes them highly attractive to teachers.Engaged in colouring or drawing on worksheets, the children often workaway quite happily for half an hour or so at a time (Folds 1987:48-9).

Current literacy practices

In junior primary classrooms surveyed, we found that literacy activities consistedlargely of copying, firstly letters from the alphabet, and then sentences or brief texts,memorising and reciting big book stories read to the class, as well as low level'phonemic awareness' drills. No child was independently reading or writing by theend of Year 2. In middle primary classes, the most common reading activityconsisted of individualised reading programs, using picture readers from remedialreading programs, as well as listening to the teacher read and sometimes readingaloud to the teacher. Writing activities included journal writing, in which learnersattempt to write texts from their own experience or from oral discussions, and agreat deal of copying from the board. These individualised activities are derivedpartly from common progressive philosophies that promote 'child-centred' teachingapproaches in mainstream classrooms, in which most students come to schoolwith extensive experience of reading in the home. In the context of indigenouscommunity schools, their outcome is to reduce the opportunities for interactionaround academically challenging tasks. This in turn reduces the potentialcommunication problems between teachers and students, but leaves indigenousstudents largely to try and learn to read and write for themselves. The proscriptionin ‘whole language’ approaches against teacher intervention in children’s creativityexacerbates this problem.

The same activities were continued into upper primary classes, with some



students reading slightly higher level texts in their individualised programs, andwriting slightly longer recounts of personal experience. However a significantnumber had not learnt to read or write independently at all, but had insteaddeveloped elaborate self-taught coping strategies such as memorising readingbooks, or surreptitious copying. The majority were still reading basal readers intheir individual reading programs, right up to Years 6 and 7, and writing no morethan simple recounts. In all years, by far the most common writing activity wascopying from the board, and all students exhibited some level of dependentbehaviours such as continual appealing to teachers while reading. Over thecourse of the primary years, individualised reading and writing activities led towidening gaps between those children who were able to make some progress intheir literacy skills, and those who barely advanced at all. This created greaterproblems for teachers, who found themselves forced to teach to a level that at leastthe majority could easily engage in, in order to minimise disruptive behaviour fromstudents who could not engage in academically challenging tasks.

We found that the basal readers used in the individual reading programsencourage indigenous students to perceive reading as a ritual practice of theschool that has no pleasurable or communicative function. As a consequencestudents do not choose to read books because they are interesting or enjoyable,but because they are the only books they can read by 'sounding out' letter-by-letter,or memorise and appear to be reading, and so get praise from the teacher whenthey finish them. The handful of students we observed who had learnt to do morethan sound out new words letter-by-letter were reading more complex texts, butwithout the comprehension necessary to get enjoyment from what they werereading. Because students are not learning how to engage with literate texts, theyhave no models on which they can draw in their writing, at the levels of subjectmatter, text staging or of literate types of meanings and wordings. The outcomesfor writing by all students are recycling of a very small range of brief texts, almost allsimple recounts or observation-comments, using an extremely limited range ofvocabulary and other language features (Gray 1986, 1990, Rose 1998). No writingsamples we collected from community schools were recognisable as factual texts,except where they were copied from the board. The following example (Text 1),written by a 12 year old upper primary student, is typical of students' journals, themain context for independent writing.



Text 1 Tuesday 3/6Yesterday I was playing games and after that I saw Craig was coming. Iwent to play on the trampoline and Last Night we were playing hide andseek. I went home. I went to sleep. This morning Me and Craig wereplaying game's and we came to school.

Three weeks later, this student had a more unusual personal experience torecount (Text 2). In response, the teacher's encouraging comment was 'Excellentinteresting story. Good English'.

Text 2 Wednesday 26/6Yesterday I went with my dad to Umuwa for Meeting and after that we went toErnabella for Shop and I saw My auntie and My sister and My brother and weall went to the Shop and me and Winmati and My dad came back to Nyapari.We had supper and after that we went to Slide Night and after that we allwent home.

Texts such as 1 and 2 are well below the levels of their writers' oral competence ineither their first languages or English. They are also well below most students'potential for both writing and reading. Yet as many teachers will recognise, theyare often the only kind of writing produced by indigenous students in communityschools, and often also in urban schools. Students such the writer of Texts 1 and2 are still writing these texts as 'English' activities after six or more years at primaryschool, and even high school. They are well and truly fossilised at a standard thatis set not by their teachers, but by their peers. Throughout remote communityschools, indigenous students have taught each other to write these kinds of texts,in the absence of other substantial direction in how to control the languagefeatures of written English. As a result, the few students who are able to enter highschool programs are unable to independently read and write the texts demandedby the curriculum, and are completely dependent on support teachers to help themwith their class and home work. Support teachers in the high school programstated that the level of help students needed to complete their work was so time-consuming that there was no time available for teaching them to read their settexts. This meant that the students remained dependent throughout the juniorsecondary years, and all but two were unable to complete high school.

The Scaffolding Literacy approach

To demonstrate how the difficulties in academic progress outlined above can beovercome, we are working with teachers and indigenous students from Years 1 to10, in community school and secondary school settings. The Scaffolding Literacy



approach we are using was first developed in Australia for indigenous students atTraeger Park primary school in Alice Springs (reported in Gray 1986, 1987, 1990,and in detail in Gray to appear). It was initially developed for younger children,using experiential learning situations called 'concentrated language encounters'.The principle of concentrated encounters was to employ interaction in direct jointexperiences, such as learning to ride horses, or hatching chickens in theclassroom, that could lead to jointly constructing written texts such as specialisedprocedures or science explanations. The kinds of shared understandingsdeveloped experientially in concentrated encounters at Traeger Park were alsoconstructed around the joint exploration of written texts between teacher andlearners. For this reason the teaching sequence developed for concentratedlanguage encounters contributed to the evolution of the 'genre' approach to writingdevelopment (eg. Martin, F. Christie and Rothery 1987, F. Christie et al 1990-92,Hyon 1996), which has begun to influence literacy teaching in indigenouseducation. Scaffolding approaches for use with written texts have been furtherdeveloped and refined in the programs of the Schools & Community Centre,University of Canberra, for primary and secondary students with severe literacydifficulties (Gray, Cowey and Graetz 1995, in press).

The Scaffolding approach seeks to work with students at or close to their fullpotential, such as at the literacy Profile Level appropriate for their school year, bygiving them adequate support to operate at this level. Scaffolding enables learnersto read and write complex texts with the support of their teachers and peers. Itdoes so by initially supporting students to understand the roles of the languagefeatures that constitute a written text, as a means to fluently and accurately read thetext without becoming overloaded. This shared understanding of the meanings inthe text is then exploited as a basis for spelling and writing activities in which thestudents gradually acquire more independent control over literate discourse.

Three conceptual frameworks inform the approach: a model of spoken and writtenlanguage, a model of reading, and a model of learning. The model of learningderives from the work of Vgotsky (eg. 1978) who saw learning as a social process,that takes place in interaction between learners and teachers, in what he termed a'zone of proximal development' that exists between what learners can do on theirown, and what they can achieve in interaction with a teacher. The social process ofa teacher initially providing maximum support, and the learner gradually taking overresponsibility for a task has been referred to as 'scaffolding' by Bruner (1986). Thissocial conception of learning differs from that which lies behind the individualisedactivities observed in community classrooms, which operate at the level of each



child's independent ability. In contrast our work has shown that indigenousstudents can be supported to read complex texts fluently that are well above theirnormal independent reading level, by building up a high level of intersubjectivitybetween teacher and students through detailed discussion of the texts they arereading. By building up this common ground for discussion, the approach short-circuits the communication difficulties that teachers so often experience inindigenous classrooms. Because it operates at a level above students' normalindependent ability, the approach also helps to resolve the problem of a widerange of ability levels in the class. While the best students are learning above theirnormal standard, even the weakest readers in the class are supported to engagewith the texts under focus. The Vgotskyan model is illustrated in the followingdiagram (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Using scaffolding to bridge between students' independent andsupported operating levels

Student 1 Student 2 Student 3

Levels at which students can operate

independently

Level at which students can operate

with Scaffolding support

Zones of proximal development

The Scaffolding Literacy approach begins with students learning to read complextexts that will later provide models for their writing. The model of reading usedinvolves two sets of skills (illustrated in Figure 4 below):• orthographic processing of letter patterns in words,• meaning prediction of the ways in which a literate text unfolds.



Both sets of skills are integral to fluent reading. Experienced readers are able todo so because they can predict the sequences in which written meanings are likelyto unfold in a text, at the same time as they automatically process the visualpatterns of letters in words. Weak readers on the other hand, bring only low levelskills to the task; their meaning prediction skills come only from theircommonsense, oral experience, and they frequently attempt to read by soundingout words letter-by-letter. It is for these reasons that students may be unable toread more complex texts than basal sentence readers. They are under too muchprocessing stress, attempting to sound out each word on the page, to attend tosequences of meaning any larger than a short sentence. Scaffolding enablesweak readers to use meaning prediction to support their low level graphophonicskills, in order to read a complex text fluently. Such texts then become a resourcefor developing high order orthographic processing skills.

Figure 4: Model of reading

Orthographic processing Meaning prediction

High orderskills Automatic processing

of visual patterns in wordsLiterate meanings

of written texts

Low orderskills Low order graphophonics,

'sounding-out' wordsCommonsense, oral meanings

from everyday experience

Finally, the model of language used to support learners to make the shift from lowto high order reading skills is a functional one, drawing on Halliday's (1994)description of functional grammar. In a functional model, language is conceived ofin terms of texts that are exchanged in social contexts, between speakers, writersand readers. Each text involves three levels of organisation, as sequences ofmeanings, as patterns of wordings that realise these meanings, and assoundings or lettter patterns that realise these wordings. This is an integratedmodel of language in its social contexts, in which each level is realised (ie.expressed, symbolised, manifested) by the next level. It is reflected in ourcommonsense conceptions of language as meaning, as wording and assounding or letter patterns, but has been developed through careful analysis ofhow texts work. These levels of organisation are known technically as discoursesemantics (sequences of meanings in a text), lexicogrammar (including bothwords and wordings), and graphophonics (sound/letter patterns).



The Scaffolding Literacy sequence begins with the social context of the text to beread, in a general orientation phase in which teacher and students jointly exploreits subject matter, its purposes, and the stages it goes through to achieve itspurposes, such as the Orientation, Complication and Resolution stages in anarrative. Secondly, general orientation involves deconstructing the sequences ofmeanings in segments of the text, at the level of paragraphs and sentences. Forexample, we might discuss how a narrative segment consists of a sequence ofactions involving the characters, followed by their reactions in the form of thinking,feeling or saying. These levels of general orientation, to a text's subject matter, itsstaging, and its discourse semantic patterns, are common pre-reading activities inmany classrooms. However the Scaffolding Literacy approach now goes further,into a high order orientation to the text, at the level of the wordings that realise itsmeanings. By means of a careful discussion and questioning cycle describedbelow, learners' attention is now focused on the grammatical and lexical featuresof the text, ie. on the functions of the word groups that make up each sentence andthen on the functions of the words within each group.

These levels of general and high order orientation - to subject matter, text staging,meaning and wording - are what enable weak readers to comprehend and fluentlyread a complex text. By focusing on one level of complexity at a time, they are ableto handle the difficult task of reading without becoming overloaded, and to enjoy theexperience of reading complex texts.Once they are able to read a text fluently, and can recognise its words out ofcontext, the Scaffolding sequence then shifts down to the next language level ofgraphophonics, focusing learners' attention on the letter patterns that make up thewords they are familiar with from the text. The sequence then turns to the writingphase, and as it does so it moves back up through the levels of language in thefunctional model. The first step moves back up to the level of wording, employingthe same discussion and questioning cycles to support learners to reconstructwhole phrases and sentences from the text, using what they have learned aboutthe letter patterns in its words, and the grammatical patterns in its sentences. Thenext step moves up to the level of discourse sequences, using writing plans toreconstruct segments of the text. Finally it moves back up to the level of text stagingand subject matter, as learners practise to write new texts that are patterned on theorganisation of the ones they have been learning to read and reconstruct. Thesephases of the Scaffolding sequence and levels of language are illustrated in thefollowing diagram, Figure 5.



Figure 5: Scaffolding sequence and levels of language

Graphophonic level

Deconstructing &

reconstructing patterns of

lettersText

in co

ntex

t lev

elD

econ

struc

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Subj

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atte

r and

Te

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agin

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Disc

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Text in context levelReconstructing Text staging w

ith new

Subject matter

Discourse sem

antic levelReconstructing D

iscourse sequences

Lexicogramm

ar levelReconstructing w

ords, phrases &

sentences

Reading Writing

As well as informing the strategies used in each phase of the Scaffoldingsequence, the functional model of language also enables us to plan a curriculumsequence logically. On one hand it enables us to analyse texts for their level ofdifficulty, so that we know which books to select for reading orientation at each levelof schooling, and we know exactly which language features to focus on at eachstage. This also enables us to construct a curriculum for each year and each term,that builds in a rational sequence from easier to more difficult texts. On the otherhand the functional language model enables us to select which types of texts tofocus on in each area of the curriculum, and how to deconstruct them. In theEnglish curriculum for example, we can begin with brief narrative genres, andmove on to short stories and then novels with more complex structures. In thescience curriculum, we have begun with the report genre in animal classification,at various levels of difficulty, and then moved on to explanations of naturalphenomena such as life cycles. In the social sciences curriculum we can exploregenres such as geography reports, historical accounts and discussions andarguments. The materials produced in genre-based writing approaches areinvaluable in this regard (eg. F. Christie et al 1990-92).



It should be noted that while the functional model of language parallels ourcommonsense one of meaning, wording and sounds/letters, it is very differentfrom the traditonal 'formal' grammars that still influence school practices. Theformal view of language starts at the bottom, with lists of sounds in a language,and then represents grammar as formal structures of words and sentences.Meaning is a marginal element in formal grammars, and whole texts are rarelyconsidered. This view of language is reflected in language pedagogies that begin,first of all with lists of letters and blends out of context (eg. alphabet and phonicsexercises), then with lists of words out of context (spelling lists), then with types ofwordings out of context (grammar exercises), and use 'remedial' programs ofbasal readers that have one word to a page, then one phrase, then a sentence ortwo. In keeping with the formal view of language, threse basal readers are focusedmore on word or sentence structures than on meaning, and so are frequentlyartifical and literally meaningless.

In teaching indigenous school students to write, we have to start with reading andwe have to show students how to attend to literate resources important to theirwriting development as they read. We can do so using meaningful whole textswhich display the kinds of literate resources that authors use. Moreover, we haveto prepare students for reading in such a way that they are not cognitivelyoverloaded. It is only when learners are reading a text fluently that they have thecapacity to attend to language choices to do with building fine levels of meaning ina text. Furthermore, as later discussion will point out, it is in the very start of theteaching sequence during the orientation phase that students should begin tohave their attention drawn towards specific language choices selected by theteacher for development.

In order to scaffold students effectively into reading complex texts fluently, andusing the features of such texts in their writing, teachers need to have a stronggeneral understanding of the differences between spoken and written language,and of the features of written English they wish to draw their students' attention to.To this end, we will illustrate in the next section, some features of spokenlanguage, both indigenous Australian languages and English. We will thencontrast these patterns of spoken text with some features of written English textsthat students are likely to meet in primary and junior secondary schooling.

Spoken and written language

In its spoken mode, the English language makes meanings in surprisingly similar



ways to Australian languages, despite the great depth of time over which theircultures have separately developed (Rose 1993, 1996, 1998b, to appear). Thiscan be illustrated by looking at the language features of a traditional indigenousAustralian narrative, and comparing them with their English translation. Thenarrative below (Text 3) is a brief extract from a story of the Pitjantjatjara people,one of a large number of origin myths that make up the cosmology known inindigenous Australia as the Dreaming (see eg. Stanner 1966). This Dreamingstory relates the origin of huge wanampi serpents that are said to dwell in the deepwaterhole of Piltati creek in the Mann Ranges, SA. In this stage of the story, twowomen are digging up burrows looking for small game, when one comes acrossthe burrow of the wanampi serpents, believing them to be merely large kuniyadesert pythons. When she tries to pull the tail of the serpent, it nearly drags herback into the burrow.

To follow the Piltati story in Pitjantjatjara, it may help to read it aloud, placing thestress on the first syllable of each word. After several re-readings it is possible toattain a reasonable level of fluency, so that the Pitjantjatjara wordings will begin tomake sense without the scaffolding support of the English glosses below eachline. Each line is a step in the narrative, and is numbered so it can be refered to inthe discussion below.

Text 3 Piltati told by Nganyintja (transcribed and translated by David Rose)

1 kangkuru-rara kutjara tjawa-ningitwo sisters were digging

2 watarku minyma kutjara tjawa-ningi tjawa-ra tjawa-raheedlessly the two women were digging, digging and digging

3 ka watja-nu wanyu wili mantji-laand (one) told "please long stick fetch"

4 ka kutju a-nuand (the other) one did go

5 munu anku-la nya-ngu nyaa nyangatja pupa-nyi wanampi purunpaand while going saw "what (is) this? crouching like a wanampi "

6 kuniya-lta palkua desert python, that is (she thought) mistakenly

7 piti tjaa nya-ngu nyangatja piti tjaathe mouth of a burrow(she) saw "this (is) a burrow mouth"



8 wanampi-lta pupa-ra ma-tjarpa-ngu that wanampi lying there had gone inside (the burrow)

9 munu kunyu ila-lta ma-ngara-ngiand it's said close inside was lying

10 ka kunyu nyaku-la kuli-nu ka ngayulu kutju-ngku witi-la and it's said (she) saw it and thought "ah, I on my own will catch it!"

11 munu kunyu ma-witi-ntjikitja-ngku ngalya-ila-ra but it's said in order to catch it as she was pulling it towards her

12 nguwanpa ma-tjarpatju-nu palunya(it) nearly dragged back inside her

13 minyma panya paluru pakara wirtjapaka-nuthat woman jumped up and ran

14 munu kunyu pitja-la watja-nu wanyu paka-ra pitja and it's said coming (to her sister) she said "please get up and come!"

15 kangkuru watja-lku-na-nta"older sister will I tell you?"

16 ka kangkuru-ngku watja-nu nyaa-n nya-ngu nyaa nyaa and her sister said "what-you did see? what? what?"

17 wala-ngku watja-la nyaa-n wangka-nyi"quickly tell! what-you are saying?"

18 wanyu puta pitja-la nya-wa"would you please come and look"

19 kuniya pulka alatjitu tjarpa-ngu"an utterly huge python entered (a burrow)

20 piti-ngka -ni nguwanpa tjarpa-tju-nu"into a burrow me nearly dragged inside

21 pulka mulapa"(it's) really huge"

Despite being a traditional, and probably very ancient myth told by a Pitjantjatjaraelder, this story shares many of the features of familiar English oral fables. Thisstory is told to entertain children, and in this respect resembles one of thefunctions of fables. However as a Dreaming story it also encodes levels ofmeaning that are only known to older people, including abstract principles of socialand natural order. Unfortunately there is not the space here to go into these



aspects of the story, since we need to focus on the meanings that are apparentand relvant to young learners.

From this perspective, the story consists of a series of character's actions, followedby their reactions, expressed as 'thinking' and 'saying'. Its staging begins with anOrientation stage that first introduces the characters and then recounts theiractivities, the women digging (1-2), one sister commanding (3), the other onegoing and seeing a burrow (4-7), the serpent entering and lying inside the burrow(8-9) the woman thinking and then pulling the serpent (10-11). This apparentlyeveryday sequence of activities builds up an atmosphere that is suddenlyshattered in line 12, when the wanampi serpent nearly drags the woman back intoits burrow. This Complication is followed by an Evaluation as she runs back to hersister, excitedly telling her what she has seen. The dialogue between the twosisters from 14 to 21 is a crucial resource here, for building the feeling ofexcitement, and also for constructing the characters as a deferential youngersister, who first saw the serpent, and the dominant older sister who demands toknow what she has seen. (Because this extract is part of a much longer narrative,the Resolution stage is not included here.)

Below the level of text staging, each step in the sequence (that is presented in Text3 as a numbered line) is generally either:• an action, eg. two sisters were digging, or• a character's reaction as 'thinking' or 'saying', eg. and the woman thought

"ah, I on my own will catch it!".Each action is realised as a clause, which in writing is written as a simplesentence with a capital letter and full stop, eg. 'Two sisters were digging.' Whetherit is spoken or written, the clause is the integral unit of meaning in the grammars ofall languages, expressing various kinds of 'doing', 'thinking/saying' or 'being', sosentences have evolved in writing to denote a clause. In the reaction, there aretwo clauses, one expressing the 'thinking' and the woman thought, and the other'what was thought' "ah, I on my own will catch it!". In writing this would be written asa complex sentence, eg. "Ah, I alone will catch it," she thought.

Finally line 21 is a description, a kind of 'being' - 'it is really huge'. The Pitjantjatjaraclause is simply two words pulka mulapa 'really huge', but English descriptiveclauses require a 'being' verb 'is', as well as a subject 'it', so it is translated aboveas '(it's) really huge'. So in both English and Australian languages, steps in thesequence of a text are expressed by clauses, of which there are three generalkinds - 'doing', 'thinking/saying' and 'being'.



The next level of meaning is expressed by the groups of words that make up eachclause. In the story each word group is glossed underneath in English. Theseword groups express three general types of meanings:• processes eg. tjawa-ningi 'were digging',• participants in these processes that are 'people' minyma kutjara 'two

women', or 'things' piti tjaa 'mouth of a burrow',• circumstances associated with them, such as 'places', piti-ngka 'in a

burrow', 'qualities' watarku 'heedlessly', pulka mulapa 'really huge', or'times'.

These meanings expressed by groups of words in Australian languages cangenerally be translated directly into an equivalent word group in English.Sometimes the meaning will be realised by two or more words in English, such as'were digging' or 'in a burrow', but as one word with an ending in Pitjantjatjara,tjawa-ningi and piti-ngka, but the unit of meaning is the same.

The next level of meaning is realised by each individual word. At this level, mostwords can also be translated directly from Australian languages into English, forexample minyma 'woman', kutjara 'two'. On the other hand, some words can't betranslated into one word in English, for example wili means 'a long flexible stick forpoking into burrows to feel for animals'. This is an item of technology that isimportant in Australian cultures but has no equivalent or name in English. Sincethe technology and other fields of English culture have expanded so enormouslyover the past few centuries, there are now a great many English words that do nottranslate directly into Australian languages like Pitjantjatjara.

All of the features of wording and text structure that we can see in this Dreamingstory can also be found in the literate English texts that students meet in primaryschool, but they are often employed in patterns that differ from speaking. A majorreason for this is that the resources of oral storytelling, of intonation and voicequality, as well as the shared knowledge between speaker and listeners, have tobe replaced in writing by the resources of the wording alone, and the sequencingof wordings. Some features that are infrequent in speech are major componentsof writing, and there are also many features of written English that are simply notpart of typical spoken discourse. An obvious example is the richer vocabularyrequired in writing to express descriptions and exact meanings, but this appliesequally at the levels of word groups, sentences and text stages.

A useful starting point for looking at these features that is comparable to the Piltati



story is the Aesops fable Lion and the Mouse. The following extract (Text 4) is froman illustrated version of the fable, at reading Profile Level 3. We have often used itto teach reading with younger readers whose starting point was at Profile Levels 1-2.

Text 4 The Lion and the Mouse retold by Patricia Scott (1993)

One day a lion was resting when a little mouse, who lived nearby, ranplayfully over his back and down over his head to the ground.

The lion stirred and, reaching out, caught the mouse beneath his paw.“Mouse,” he said, “you have disturbed my sleep. I think I will eat you.”

“Oh, pardon, my Lord,” said the mouse. “Please do not eat me. Perhaps, ifyou forgive me, someday I may be able to do something to help you.”

The lion laughed. “You, a little mouse, help me, the king of the beasts?” Helaughed again, but he lifted his paw, allowing the mouse to go free. With ahasty ‘thank you”, the mouse ran off before the lion could change his mind.

At the level of text staging, the overall unfolding of The Lion and the Mouse iscomparable with that of the Piltati Dreaming story. The Orientation in the firstparagraph is followed by a Complication in the second, that is reacted to by themouse in the third, and resolved in the last. Again the relative status of thecharacters, as a dominating Lion and deferential Mouse, is constructed in theirdialogue. However below this level, although the language features of the writtentext are comparable to the spoken one, the way they unfold is quite different.Rather than unfolding as a simple sequence of events and reactions, each step inthe written story is expanded, elaborating on the events, the characters or thelocations. For example the first sentence begins with an apparently simplestatement:

1 One day a lion was resting

If we were drawing only on oral experience, we would expect this sentence to becompleted with a place, such as under a tree, since actions in oral stories tend toinclude little more additional information than where or when it occurred. This isalso a typical structure in the Piltati story, such as it nearly dragged me into aburrow. However in the written fable, this typical pattern is interrupted with thefollowing expansion.

2 when a little mouse



Now from our oral experience we would expect the sentence to be completed withthe mouse's action, such as ran. However, instead of going straight to the actionthe mouse's character is first elaborated with a quality that is relevant for its rolelater in the story (since he passes by again and rescues the lion from a hunter'snet he is caught in).

3 who lived nearby

Only now that both characters are introduced, and the character of the mouse isexpanded with a significant quality, does its action occur.

4 ran

Again, we might expect this action to be completed by a location, perhaps over thelion, but instead we learn how the action happened, further elaborating on themouse's character.

5 playfully

Now finally, after the mouse and its action have been expanded with qualities, thiscomplex sentence is completed with the location of the action. Nevertheless eventhis is not simple, but consists of three locations in sequence.

6 over his back -> and down over his head -> to the ground.

Note that 'his back' and 'his head' refer to the lion in the first clause, not to themouse in this clause. So the reader must not only be able to negotiate thiscomplex sequence of actions, descriptions, qualities, and sequence of places, butalso recognise which of the characters is being referred to at any point.

Within each sentence of Lion and the Mouse, each clause or word groupexemplified in lines 1 to 6, may be part of students' commonsense oral experience.Like the spoken Piltati story, each of these chunks of meaning consist of actions,descriptions, places, times and qualities. However the way they are sequenced inthe sentence here is not typical of spoken language but of writing. Instead of asimple sequence of actions in places, in writing the characters, the events, andeven the places are continually expanded with more information. This is becausewriters cannot assume that their readers share any knowledge about thesefeatures of a story, whereas speakers usually can, particularly in the experience ofyoung children. So without an orientation to written ways of meaning younglearners are likely to have great difficulty understanding what the story is about,



since the meanings that they expect to occur at each point do not occur. Insteadthere is some type of expansion of meaning that they do not expect, making thesequence of meanings in the text difficult for these readers to predict from their oralexperience. To be able to independently predict the sequence of meanings, theyneed experience of how stories are written in English. Their problems in meaningprediction will also be greatly compounded if their graphophonic skills are weak,so that they are simultaneously under pressure, trying to decode the letter patternsin unfamiliar words such as nearby or playfully, and simultaneously to predictunfamiliar sequences of meaning. These are the kinds of problems experiencedby indigenous students learning to read written English.

Despite its considerable differences to spoken ways of meaning, Lion and theMouse is still only at reading Profile Level 3 (middle primary level). In order toengage successfully with the secondary school curriculum, students need to bereading and writing at Profile Level 5-6. It is essential that indigenous students inupper primary years learn to read such texts, yet we found very few who were ableto independently read texts at the level of Lion and the Mouse.

Curriculum sequencing

Just as we were able to identify differences between spoken and written ways ofmeaning in Piltati and Lion and the Mouse, the functional model of languageallows us to identify exactly how texts become more challenging as we more upthrough a curriculum sequence. The following (Text 5) is an extract from a shortstory by Paul Jennings at Profile Level 4. At this reading level, texts are beginningto resemble adult fiction in many ways. They are becoming much longer, withmultiple segments that are mini-stories in themselves. Within each segment thereare more complex narrative structures, with long stages, especially longOrientations and Complications that build up the scene, the characters and theatmosphere. Elements are introduced early in the text that are significant later, andthere are usually multiple participants to keep track of. In order for the whole text tomake sense, readers need to be able to hold all this information in their minds asit unfolds. To do so they should be under no processing stress decoding its wordsat the graphophonic level. It is for this reason that this level of text becomesappropriate towards the upper primary years, as students acquire sufficientexperience of reading for automatic visual processing. Older students with lowgraphophonic and meaning prediction skills need a high order orientation to readthis level of text. Teachers in the programs we are working with have done sosuccessfully, leading to text patterning that we will exemplify below.



Text 5 from A Good Tip for Ghosts by Paul Jennings (1994)

A little way off behind some old rusting car bodies, I thought I heard a noise.Pete was looking in the same direction. I was too terrified to move. I wantedto run but my legs just wouldn't work. I opened my mouth to scream butnothing came out. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to the ground.

It was a rustling tapping noise. It sounded like someone digging around inthe junk, turning things over. It was coming in our direction. I just stoodthere pretending to be a dead tree or post. I wished the moon would go inand stop shining on my white face. The tapping grew louder. It was comingcloser.

And then we saw it. Or him. Or whatever it was. An old man, with a batteredhat. He was poking the ground with a bent stick. He was rustling in therubbish. He came on slowly. He was limping. He was bent and seemed tobe holding his old, dirty trousers up with one hand. He came towards us.With a terrible shuffle.

Pete and I both noticed it at the same time. His feet weren't touching theground. He was moving across the rubbish about 30 centimetres above thesurface. It was the ghost of Old Man Chompers.

We both screeched the same word at exactly the same moment. "Run!" Anddid we run. We tore through the waist-high rubbish. Scrambling.Screaming. Scrabbling. Not noticing the waves of silent rats slithering outof our way. Not feeling the scratches of dumped junk. Not daring to turn andsnatch a stare at the horrible spectre who hobbled behind us.

Finally, with bursting lungs, we crawled into the back of an old car. It had nodoors or windows so we crouched low, not breathing, not looking, not evenhoping.

Features of discourse patterns and wordings in this text, that teachers havefocused on in general and high order orientations, include the following:• A build up of tension in steps as the boys' awareness of the 'ghost'

becomes more certain, and they react to their perceptions, eg. I thought Iheard a noise -> It was a rustling tapping noise -> And then we saw it -> Itwas the ghost of Old Man Chompers.

• Long sequences of reaction sentences, eg. I was too terrified to move. Iwanted to run but my legs just wouldn't work. I opened my mouth to screambut nothing came out. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to the ground.

• Complex sentence Themes (ie. beginnings of sentences that establishcircumstances), eg. A little way off -> behind some old rusting car bodies.These are important to set the location, time or atmosphere of text stages.



• Other complex chains of elements, eg. someone digging around -> in thejunk, -> turning things over. These elaborate actions or circumstances,describing them more exactly.

• Complex groups of words around a noun, that provide elaboratedescriptions of things or people, eg. some old rusting car bodies... a rustlingtapping noise... his old, dirty trousers... a terrible shuffle... exactly the samemoment... the waist-high rubbish... the waves of silent rats... the scratches ofdumped junk... the horrible spectre who hobbled behind us...

• Wide variety of lexical choices that realise exact meanings, eg. rustling,shuffle, screeched, scrambling, screaming, scrabbling, slithering, spectre,crawled, crouched

• Metaphors and similes, eg. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to theground... Finally, with bursting lungs,... snatch a stare... These encouragereaders to use their imaginations to picture the events or circumstances.

From a starting point for reading at Profile Levels 2-3, the indigenous students inthe upper primary and junior secondary classes we worked with learnt to read thistext fluently and accurately, by means of high order book orientation. They thenwent on to reconstruct and then write new texts patterned on this one. TheScaffolding Literacy strategies that enabled them to do so are outlined as follows.

The Scaffolding Literacy sequence

The scaffolding sequence begins by building shared knowledge around the text, inthe Book Orientation phase of the sequence. During book orientation the teacherprepares students for reading a text accurately without stress. Once they can readthe text without having to attend to working out words, they can attend to themeaning of the text. Weak readers have difficulty engaging with many of the morecomplex elements of the language in the texts they read, as illustrated above forLion and the Mouse and Good Tip for Ghosts. This then is the language a teacherfocuses on in a detailed book orientation. The discussion teachers have withstudents before they read a text has implications not just for reading accurately, butfor their overall understanding of the text and their ability to then 'borrow' from thetext in their writing. After a detailed book orientation students are ready to read thetext with understanding that can be recalled later during the writing process. Bookorientation has four outcomes for learners:• Becoming a code-breaker: Learners' enhanced ability to make sense at a

high level allows more mental space to deal with decoding the letterpatterns of words.



• Becoming a text-participant: The focus upon the staging of the text and theauthor's reasons for particular language choices accustoms learners to theprecise levels of meaning which good writers build into their texts.

• Becoming a text-user: Drawing learners' attention to language choices at adetailed level shows them potential choices they themselves can employ intheir own writing.

• Becoming a text-analyst: Engaging with a story at this level is fundamentalto developing critical views about why and how authors make the choicesthey do in their writing.

The teachers started book orientation on Good Tip for Ghosts by reading anddiscussing the story as a whole with the class, including features such as itsstaging, sequences of events and reactions, the characters and their qualities anddescriptions. The discussion takes the form of a cycle with three phases:• Preformulation, in which the teacher draws students' attention to features of

the text that he or she intends to focus on, giving them information abouteach feature that they will able to draw on in the next phase;

• Focus questions, which are carefully framed to enable students to makeconnections between each feature and its function in the text;

• Reformulation, in which the teacher is careful to accept students' responsesto the focus questions, and then elaborates them with additional informationthat students are able to connect with their own responses.

The function of this discussion is not testing. It is first of all to establish sharedunderstandings that become a basis for interaction between teacher and studentsaround the text, and then to use this interaction to focus learners' attention on itsliterate language features.

Following this general discussion of the text, the teacher would read a selectedpassage from an overhead projection, using a coloured plastic strip to keep placeso that the students can read along, and their attention can be drawn to the actualwordings that express the meanings they have discussed in the earlier phase.The discussion and re-readings of the text enable students to begin accuratelypredicting the sequence of meanings in the story, and so to follow the sequenceas the teacher reads, even if they are not yet able to identify all its wordsindependently. This text level of meaning prediction then forms a foundation fordiscussing the more detailed meanings at the level of sentences, phrases andwords in chosen segments of the text, again using the overhead projection. Thisphase of the scaffolding sequence is known as High Order Book Orientation. Itemploys the same cycle of preformulating, questioning and reformulating



discussion, but with a very detailed focus on the wordings that express each chunkof meaning in the text segment. The following are examples of preformulation,questioning and reformulation used for discussing the first sentence of the extractfrom Good Tip for Ghosts. The discussion begins with the complex Theme of thesentence that establishes how far away the noise was and where it was comingfrom.

First off the boy who is telling the story tells us how far away the noiseseemed. Can you see how the book says that? Can you read it? (A littleway off) Can you think why it would be more scary to have the noise a littleway off rather than a long way off?

Not only does the preformulation and questioning cycle enable learners to focuson the wording of this feature (A little way off), and what it means in the story'scontext (how far away the noise seemed), but it also encourages them to thinkcritically about why the author has made this choice at this point of the story (why itwould be more scary). The teacher then accepts whatever the students say with'Yes,' and then reformulates it with more information, eg. 'A noise that is closewould be really scary wouldn't it?'

Now we find out exactly where the noise was coming from. Can you readwhat it says? (behind some old rusting car bodies) Is it more scary, do youthink, if a noise was coming from behind the old rusting car bodies? Why?

Once again, the teacher has accepted whatever the students say with 'Yes', thenasked a question focusing on the function of this location in the story. Againstudents responses can be reformulated with more information, eg. 'If the noisewas behind something you wouldn’t be able to see what it was, would you. Youwould start to imagine all sorts of things.' Now the focus of discussion can shift tothe level of the nominal group that describes the car bodies, and the function of thisdescription in the story as a whole.

Paul Jennings tells us lots of information about the car bodies in the story,doesn't he? That's because if they were old and rusting they were probablyreal wrecks. It's important that we know about that because later in the storydo you remember where the twins hide?

The teacher then points out the where the old car bodies become significant at theend of the passage we crawled into the back of an old car. It had no doors or



windows... Then the next focus of discussion is on the wording that tells us thenarrator isn't sure about the noise. This lack of certainty is significant because it isthe first step in the gradual buildup of tension as the 'ghost' appears.

Now we know where the noise seemed to be coming from, the next part ofthe story tells us that the boy telling the story isn't sure that he's heard thenoise. Can you see how he tells us that he isn’t sure? (I thought I heard anoise).

Because they are now thoroughly familiar with the sequence of meanings in thetext, without having to spell all its words accurately, all the students are able toidentify word groups that express each of these chunks of meaning. Discussionand questions always refer to the actual wordings of the text, so that the studentslearn to use the language of the text to answer them. In this way, they rapidlybecome familiar and comfortable, not only with the wordings of the story, but withthe preformulation, questioning and reformulation strategies used to focus on thetask. It is interesting to see how quickly a shift can take place in students, from afocus on interpersonal relationships, and looking for answers either from theteacher or in their own heads, towards focusing on the learning task, and lookingfor answers in reading texts. The kinds of communication breakdown thatfrequently characterise teacher-student interaction in indigenous classrooms arethus avoided. This is because the teacher only asks questions she knows thestudents can answer, avoiding the common frustrating problem of students tryingto ‘guess-what’s-in-the-teacher’s-head’. Far from being culturally inappropriate,this mode of questioning is participated in enthusiastically by all the indigenousstudents in the classes we have worked with. They quickly learn to predict and usethe questioning strategies themselves, and this enables them to begin developingcritical strategies for engaging with texts.

Initially, as students respond to the focus questions, they can be invited to comeout and highlight the words and word groups they have identified on the overheadtransparency. This enables the whole class to watch the process and participate.At some point they might also be asked to highlight the words in their ownphotocopy of the text. Any words that students cannot identify are left withouthighlighting the transparency. This is then followed by joint readings of the text,with the students reading the familiar highlighted portions, and the teacher readingthe remainder. This process is continued until students are reading the selectedtext segment fluently. With one-to-one orsmall group work, this highlighting can bedone directly onto students’ own copies.



A further intensive strategy is to use 'transformations' of sentences from the story,written out on cardboard strips. This can be done individually, in groups, or withthe whole class using a board on which the cardboard strips are placed so thateveryone can see them. Again students are asked to identify word groups andwords in the strips, using the same types of focus questions, but then they cut outthese parts of the sentences and put them back into place. This allows students tosuccessfully manipulate the wordings of a sentence, without the added pressureof attempting to write unfamiliar words. Games are then played with these cutups,such as shuffling and getting students to re-arrange them, turning them over andasking the students to identify and then check them. Once the word groups andtheir sequence in the sentence are thoroughly familiar, they can then be cut up intoindividual words, and the same games can be played. By means of text marking,reading along with the teacher, and transformations, even the least able readersrapidly learn to read the story. They are able to do so using the resource ofmeaning prediction in tandem with their limited graphophonic skills, to identifyeach word in its context in the text.

After the book orientation it is important that the students read the text until they canread it at close to 100% accuracy. It is not possible for learners to take resourcesfrom reading until they can read the model text accurately. Once all students areable to read the story fluently and accurately, it becomes a resource for using itslanguage features in their own writing. The first step in the writing phase of thescaffolding sequence is to ensure that students can identify all the significantwords out of context of the text. This can be done using the transformation cutupsas flash cards, and playing games such as 'My Pile-Your Pile', until all the wordsunder focus are in the students' pile. They can also supported to identify words bychecking them in the context of the text if they are unsure. When all the studentscan securely identify words out of context, they then learn to spell them, usingScaffolded Spelling strategies based on 'chunking' of letter patterns.

Scaffolded spelling begins by showing students, first of all how to identify letterpatterns that make common word endings, such as -ing, -ed, -ly, -s, and so on,and how to chunk compound and multisyllabic words such as litt-le, be-hind, rust-ing, bodie-s, di-rec-tion. Each single syllable that makes up a word is alsochunked into its patterns of Onset consisting of the initial consonant cluster, andRhyme consisting of the remainder, eg. l-itt-le, w-ay, be-h-ind, s-ome, r-ust-ing, th-ought, h-eard, n-oise, l-ook-ing, scr-ambl-ing, scr-eam-ing, scr-abbl-ing, and soon.



Dividing words into these chunks of common letter patterns makes it much easierfor students to remember the spelling of words that they already know from the text,rather than the standard spelling approach that employs lists of decontextualisedwords that weak readers attempt to memorise as arbitrary strings of letters, like atelephone number. The chunking approach works because it makes explicit thevisual letter patterns that constitute the English spelling system, that fluent readersprocess automatically as they read. By using words that the students alreadyknow, within the context of a meaningful text, they are adequately supported tomove from ineffective low level graphophonic strategies, such as sounding out,towards automatic visual processing of letter patterns. The teacher may sound outthe words as she chunks them, but by saying the letter patterns that make up theword, not the names or sounds of each letter out of context of the word.

In the scaffolded spelling sequence, the teacher may begin by demonstrating withthe transformations, by cutting a word into its letter patterns, and then invitingstudents to cut the remaining words with the support of the class. Each studentthen uses a small board and eraser on which to practise writing the letter patternsof each word, an activity enjoyed by students at all year levels. One advantage ofusing erasable boards with indigenous students is that it overcomes the fear thatmany students have of making mistakes, or of messy writing. Because it istemporary and erasable, they can focus on the task of practising spelling instead ofproducing a perfect page in their workbook. After students are able to spell each ofthe words in a sentence, a further step is to get them to write the whole sentence.This can be supported with 'easy spelling', where the teacher writes part of thesentence and the students provide the remainder that they know well. Easyspelling is a co-operative process where teacher and students work together toreconstruct part of a text. In the absence of overload the students are able todevelop meaning/linguistic competence at the same time as practising spelling.

By the time the teacher and students have shared a detailed book orientation andcarried out the scaffolded spelling activities, much of the deconstruction of a textwill have been done. By this time the students will be completely familiar with themodel text. They will have a detailed understanding of the text's meaning and willhave written some of the text in easy spelling. In addition, they will have discussedwhy the author made certain language choices when writing the text. They willunderstand for example that an author plans a text with a sequence of stages, andwill have looked at these stages in the model text. The students will also have anunderstanding about how the author wrote the text. This understanding could



include sequencing words, image building words and how the author includedcharacters' thoughts, feeling and reactions. Once the students can read a textaccurately, recognise all the words in the text in and out of context, spell many ofthe words in the text, and understand the reasons why the author made certainlanguage choices in writing the text, this text can be used to teach the studentsabout writing.

Following this preparation the next step is Reconstructed Writing, a strategy inwhich teacher and students jointly reconstruct a text. This involves identifying thestructure and language resources that exist in a text and rewriting it, using thelanguage of the author. Reconstructing a text may sound like the strategy ofretelling commonly used by teachers. Although there are some obvioussimilarities the underlying purpose of the strategy is quite different. While teachersusually insist that children retell a story 'in their own words' the purpose ofreconstruction is to use the actual words of the author. Learners with writingdifficulties are not aware of the words in texts that are important for making awritten text coherent and interesting, rather they expect that the reader will knowwhat they mean. They do not know what they need to write to inform the readerabout characters' feelings and reactions, or the amount of description they need tobuild up images and understanding for the reader.Since they have never been able to read a text exactly enough to be aware of literaryfeatures of texts, they need considerable support to be able to write using thesefeatures. This support consists of removing some of the stress of writing for themby helping them take on the actual words used by an author of a text they can read.

Some short texts could be completely reconstructed. However, this strategy wouldalso be used frequently to reconstruct a shorter segment of a longer narrative oreven just a paragraph or two. For example, if the teacher wanted to teach studentsto use image building language they could choose a short section of the textcontaining a description and work on this. The first step in reconstruction is tojointly construct a 'writing plan' for the text. The plan should be a simple guide tohelp the students remember the sequence of the writing to be done, and can alsoremind the students about language features to include. The writing plan willdraw on the focus questions used in the high order orientation, and often providethe beginning of clauses, including the conjunctions used to connect clauses in acomplex sentences, such as but, as if, and so on. For example a writing plan forreconstructing the first paragraph of Good Tip for Ghosts might take the form of thefollowing.



how far away? where? , how sure? I heard a noise.Pete was looking where? .I was how scared?I wanted to _______________but my legs _______________.I opened _________________but _____________________.Pete ____________________as if he was ______________.

At this point in the reconstruction the student's familiarity with the text becomesapparent. The work done during book orientation initially enabled the students toread the text, now it will provide writing support. The teacher will need to remindthe students of earlier discussions or have them again. The students mayremember the text exactly. They do not have to remember the whole text parrotfashion, however, but the teacher will want them to remember the sequence of thenarrative and much of the literary language you want the students to take over.Good writers borrow from other written texts constantly and have developed fromtheir reading a range of resources they can draw on when writing. Because of thisthey are able to also develop the flexibility to be 'creative' and invent their ownunique style. However, learners without resources cannot be creative becausethey do not know what they are expected to 'create'. Therefore they must beallowed to borrow the actual words of familiar texts and understand why they aredoing this.

The teacher now uses the writing plan to assist the students to say what they aregoing to write. This is an important step. It is not enough to assume that becausethe teacher has discussed or pointed out the literary language and made a plan,the students will be able to write it. Typically, weak writers tend to fall back on theirhabitual methods of writing to produce a product that counts as a 'good try' if theyare under any overload. Once the students are completely certain of how to saywhat they are going to write, they choose the method of writing and write. There arethree options which provide increasing levels of support. The least supportive isfor the students to write independently. This option would be chosen if the teacherwas sure the students were absolutely confident of the content and could spellmany of the words of the text correctly. The next option is to use a 'shortwrite'. Thisstrategy involves the teacher and students both writing at the same time. Itprovides support because the students can take from the teacher's writing anything



they forgot or want to change. The most supportive option is to use dictated writing,in which the teacher writes what the students dictate. There is the flexibility withthis strategy for the students to write parts of the text while the teacher writes therest. This can be done with a whole class on the whiteboard.

Once the writing is finished, the students re-read the completed text. The teacherpraises them for taking on the language of the author and reminds them of why itwas important to do this. The writing is compared with the model text and studentscheck whether any changes need to be made. Once they are able to reconstruct atext in the way described above, their detailed knowledge of this text can be built onby using it for Text Patterning. Text patterning is a strategy where students use themodel text as support for organising the structure of the text, and for learning howto use resources that writers employ to make their writing literate rather than likeoral language. The procedure for text patterning includes the following steps:• The teacher explains to the class that they are going to use the text they have

just reconstructed as a pattern for a text of the their own.• A writing plan is jointly constructed, using the original story as a pattern. It is

important to develop an overall plan of the staging in the text, and to discusswhat information needs to be included in each step.

• Writing begins using dictated writing, shortwrites or independent writing,depending on the amount of support needed. Writing is done for shortperiods at a time.

• The plan and model text are referred to as students write, and the teacherreminds them of the language choices that the author of the model used intheir writing.

• The text is re-read and any changes that need to be made are discussed.The teacher makes positive comments about how the students used thelanguage resources modelled by the author. When the writing is completedit can be presented attractively, and can also be used as a resource forreading and spelling for students.

Before text patterning on Good Tip for Ghosts, few students in the classes weworked with had ever written texts above Profile Level 2. A typical student wasGrant, aged 15 and currently in Year 8 high school. Before beginning theScaffolding work with his class, Grant's independent writing consisted entirely ofrecounts or observation-comments at Level 2, exemplified by the following (Text 6),written after a year of 'bridging' intended to prepare him for entry to mainstreamhigh school. It is an edited final draft.



Text 6 Going Hunting by GrantIn the holidays I went back to my land we always go hunting in the car andwe shot one kangaroo. Then we cooked the kangaroo in the fire and atesome of the meat and we took the rest of the meat to my family. After that wewent back to Ernabella then I went sleep and in the morning I had breakfastand went to the shop. I bought chips and sprite then went back to my houseand watched a video about the running man, then I switched the video offand put a computer game in and played on the game. It was good to playand I had fun.

While the subject matter of Text 6 illustrates something of the diversity of Grant'severyday experience in a changing culture, it could hardly be described as acoherent story, in terms of either indigenous or western traditions. It fallssomewhere in between, generated out of neither cultural tradition, but rather fromthe dysfunctional contexts of writing activities in community schools, in whichstudents are not given sufficient direction in how to write beyond stringing eventstogether, one after another. Although it represents the outcome of Grant's seven oreight years of schooling, it certainly does not display the literacy skills he needs toparticipate successfully in secondary school, at any of the levels we have beendiscussing, of subject matter, text organisation, discourse sequences, grammarfeatures or lexical choices. In contrast, the following (Text 7) was written by Grantfollowing a Scaffolding sequence with his class, using Good Tip for Ghosts. Thefirst paragraph was written jointly with the whole class, with each student takingturns to write a contribution on the board. The remainder Grant wrote using awriting plan constructed jointly with the class.

Text 7 The Scary Cemetery by GrantClose by under some old broken gravestones, I thought I heard a scarysound. Ethan was staring at trhe gravestones too. I was so scared I wasshaking. I wanted to hide but I couldn't see a tree in the dark. I opened mymouth to shout but my tongue wouldn't work.

It was a soft, crying noise. It sounded like someone who was terribly sad. Itwas coming our way. I just stood there staring in the direction of the crying. Iwished I could cover the moon so that I would be invisible. The crying grewlouder. It was coming towards us.

Then we saw it. Or him. Or whatever it was. An old woman with a bentbroom. She was sweeping a floor, looking for something. She was walkingslowly towards us. She was carrying her dirty old broom and in the otherhand she had a dust pan. Ethan and I noticed it the same time. She didn'ttouch the ground. She was floating above the ground. She was movingacross the gravestones about thirty centimetres above the ground.



We both shouted the word in the same time "Lets run". And then we ran.We ran through the gravestones. Scrambling. Screaming. Scrabbling. Notnoticing the slithering snakes going out of our way. Not even looking back atthe gravestones. Not daring to stop and turn and look at the old woman.

Finally I found a gravestone with a door open. So we crawled into the grave.It had no coffin and fresh air, so we sat down. Not talking, not laughing, noteven thinking. Why have we come to this horrible cemetery? Silly. Silly.Silly.

In this first step in text patterning, Grant has chosen to stay fairly close to theoriginal story. He has used the wording of the Paul Jennings text for support,where he felt it necessary, but has also felt confident enough to depart from itsignificantly, in subject matter, and language choices. In further steps in textpatterning, he will rapidly become more familiar with the process of writing from aplan, and become confident enough to take risks with new stories. Consideringthe level at which Grant was writing previously The Scary Cemetery was aremarkable achievement.

Scaffolding factual texts

Narrative is a useful starting point for scaffolding indigenous students up to theirappropriate level, because it is a genre that is familiar in their oral experience, andis an enjoyable entry point for exploring new or imaginary realms of experience.However learning to read and write factual texts is also crucial to exploring the newworlds of science, society and environment, and other curriculum areas. As wementioned above, there are very few students from remote communities producingfactual texts that are recognisable as reports or explanations, right up to middlesecondary levels. The following is a writing sample produced by a Year 10 studentat Wiltja, following a lesson in which the field of goannas was discussed, from theperspective of both the students’ experience and the field of biology, resource textswere read with the class, and the structure of science reports was modelled.

Text 8 Goannas by CraigGoannas are native animals that live in isolated place and they are reptilesGoannas look as same as area where they live in. They camouflage theirself with the area their colour looks like yellowish-brown and they eat insectand dead animalsGoannas breed about six eggsAboriginals hunt goannas for food and the fat inside the goannas are usedfor medicine.



Because it followed intensive discussion of the field, and modelling of the structureof science reports, Text 8 is above what this student was normally producing,which was no more than simple recounts that would be classified at Profile Levels2-3. However it is still well behind what is required of Year 10 students, whoshould be writing at Profile Level 8 to matriculate to senior secondary school.Writing of this text was followed by a scaffolding sequence taught by a teacher atWiltja over fifteen half hour lessons, spanning six weeks. First the class learned tofluently read and reconstruct a Profile Level 4 science report on goannas, using thesame reading preparation, spelling and text reconstruction strategies describedabove for Good Tip for Ghosts. This report is reproduced below as Text 9

Text 9 Goannas from Barry Silkstone (1997)Australia is home to 25 of the world's 30 monitor lizard species. In Australia,monitor lizards are called goannas.

Goannas have flattish bodies, long tails and strong jaws. They are the onlylizards with forked tongues, like a snake. Their necks are long and mayhave loose folds of skin beneath them. Their legs are long and strong, withsharp claws on their feet. Many goannas have stripes, spots and othermarkings that help to camouflage them.

All goannas are daytime hunters. They run, climb and swim well. Thelargest species can grow to more than two metres in length.

Goannas hunt small mammals, birds and other reptiles. They also eatdead animals. Smaller goannas eat insects, spiders and worms.

Male goannas fight with each other in the breeding season. Females laybetween two and twelve eggs.

Once they were confidently reconstructing the report at this level, the students weremuch better prepared to read resource texts at their own age level, within the samegeneral field. This is because they were learning to manipulate the kinds oflanguage features expected in science reports, such as:• Staging of reports in animal classification of General Classification (first

paragraph in Text 9), Appearance (second paragraph), and Behaviour(remaining paragraphs).

• Sequence in Appearance stage from body shape through body parts, and inBehviour stage from hunting to breeding.

• Clauses that express 'are' and 'have' relations by which science describesand classifies phenomena (most of the clauses in Text 9).

• Complex nominal groups that describe phenomena, such as ...flattish



bodies, long tails and strong jaws, ...stripes, spots and other markings thathelp to camouflage them, ...more than two metres in length, and so on.

• Technical terms, like monitor lizards, species, breeding season (for moredetail about the language of school science see Wignell, Martin & Eggins1993, Rose 1997).

In the process of learning to manipulate these language features, the students hadlearnt crucial information about how science classifies species taxonomies, andabout how a science report in this field classifies and describes an animal. Thenext step was then to provide scaffolding for students to read a Profile Level 7reference text on goannas, in order to get more detailed information on goannas,written in more elaborate forms. This information was then used to elaborate theirreconstructed reports, as the Text Patterning stage of the scaffolding sequence.The product was a new text that each student had constructed for themselves onthe scaffold provided by the reconstructed report.

In the next phase more scaffolding activities were conducted on high levelreference texts about Komodo Dragons, another type of monitor lizard that thestudents were intensely interested in. The final stage was for each student toproduce new texts independently on Komodo Dragons. The following, Text 6, isthe first draft of a report produced by Craig, the author of Text 4 just six weekspreviously.

Text 10 Final Report by Craig (first draft)The largest of all the lizards would be the Komodo Dragon which has astrong body and also a long tail. The Komodo Dragon has scales all overits body and can grow to ten feet long. The Komodo Dragon has a veryvisible earhole and you can see their nostrils on the end of their snout. TheKomodo Dragon has the same tongue like the goanna in Australia, thetongue is forked like a snake. The Komodo Dragon has teeth, less than aninch long which is covered by spongy gum.

The Komodo Dragon is an Einstein of its own world of reptiles. TheKomodo Dragon knows that he has caught food before in an area wherethere are animals. The Komodo Dragon ambushes its prey, the dragonknows that there is a goat or a deer coming towards him. The way thedragon knows is because it has its tongue sticking out of its mouth. Whenthe animal gets close to the dragon, the dragon does not show a sign ofexcitement.

The dragon has six-sense which is a combination of smell and taste. Whenthe Komodo Dragon sticks its tongue out, the chemical on the goat or thedeer is collected by the tongue. Then the chemical from the goat or deer



drops down to the pond, then information is sent to the brain. The KomodoDragon then catches the prey and kills the prey. If the dragon bites the preythen it dies in a different way, which is poison from the dragon bite. If thedragon gets its prey it bites its throat and shakes crazily, and then itswallows its prey. The dragon swallows its prey helped by thick gobs ofspit. The Komodo Dragon coughs out anything it can't eat, like the horns orfur.

The Komodo Dragon eats once a month and eats incredible mounds offood. It takes several weeks to digest.

This remarkable flowering of factual writing skills demonstrates the potential ofindigenous students like Craig to read, write and achieve at the appropriate levelsfor their years. Despite this potential, Craig's class group had never written textslike this before because they had not been previously taught to read at their yearlevels, nor how to use the literate resources from their reading, in order to writesuccessfully.

The scaffolding strategies outlined above offer the opportunities that indigenousstudents are asking for to read and write at their year levels. They are not aninstant panacea, but require consistent application within a curriculum frameworkthat is properly sequenced and paced to enable students to make rapid, butrealistic progress. Currently we have found, like Malcolm, M. Christie and Folds,that this kind of systematic programming and focused teaching is a rarity inindigenous community schools, where the majority of students' literacy levels areso out of kilter with the mainstream curriculum goals for their years. In contrast therapid improvements attainable with scaffolding strategies enable teachers to setclear academic targets for their indigenous students, and program and teach tothese goals.

The schools we are working with have clearly demonstrated that the scaffoldingliteracy approach can achieve remarkable results for indigenous students, if theyare carefully and consistently applied. They are not difficult for teachers to take on,but they do require a serious committment at the levels of classroom practice,curriculum planning and school management to be successful. This means thatteachers and management in indigenous schools must be able and willing to alterthe current focus on behaviour management and on keeping students busy withnon-productive activities, including ritualised activities such as individual reading oflow level picture readers and endless recycling of simple recounts in personalwriting activities. We need to think carefully about how to build literacy learning intoeach curriculum area, and how to select texts for reading and writing that will



enable students to engage successfully with the curriculum at each stage of theirprimary and secondary schooling. This is already beginning to happen in theschools we are working with, in all classes from Year 1 to Year 10. From startingpositions with literacy documented in Figure 1 and 2, these students are alreadyreading and producing texts that are more appropriate for their years, and will havea much better chance of succeeding in primary and secondary schooling than theyor their teachers previously imagined possible. We have no doubt that givenadequate support and committment, the scaffolding literacy approach can enableindigenous students throughout Australia to achieve the same levels of success ineducation that other Australians consider their right.

AcknowledgmentsWe would like to acknowledge the work of the students of Amata community schooland the Wiltja secondary program, and their teachers including Faye Blanche,Leanne Caire, Gina Chish, Ashley Dorr, Jenny Maslen, Kerry Regan, Lisa Tapp andWayne Wearne-Jarvis, in implementing and contributing to the development of theScaffolding Literacy approach in their classrooms.

David Rose may be contacted by email on [email protected]

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